Celestial Inferno
by Allan Squidman
Summary: Once again not exactly fanfic but a theme inspired by Heroes (See Timestep Trilogy - our previous work) A strange, volatile substance is headed for earth, and for the first time ever the Kidmans and their partners must face the wrath of the cosmos or see their entire planet get melted down.
1. Chapter 1

Charlotte suddenly shook awake from a nightmare.

What little light made it through the curtains from the moonless darkness outlined the familiar shapes in her room, reassuring her that the death and suffering that she had just witnessed had only taken place in her head. In the silence broken only by her seemingly deafening heartbeat, she fumbled on her bedside cabinet until she found the little piece of cloth she had left there. Charlotte wiped her face, unsure whether the moisture was from her tears, a cold sweat from what she had just experienced, or from the strange autumn heatwave they had been having. She climbed out of bed and got dressed. There were things to be done and allies to be alerted, because she knew that the nightmare that had awoken her was no dream. It was a vision.

Edward Kidman was making pancakes as a late breakfast for himself, his brother, Allan, and their girlfriends. Sleeping in on days when the world has not yet cried out in peril was one of the perks of being one of its heroes, along with the superpowers, of course. Nate Beta-Unit, Edward's dear friend and robotic companion, was usually the one to make breakfast, but Edward liked to occasionally remind himself that even machines can lie in once in a while. Everyone was wearing light, loose-fitting clothing as another merciless scorcher of a day beat down onto the beige landscape.

When Allan answered the desperate knock on the door, the look on his niece's face forewent all formalities. "What did you see, Charlotte?"

Charlotte cut straight to the chase, because she knew there was precious little time: "A meteor is headed for earth that will destroy life as we know it. Impact is tomorrow before dawn."

There was silence for a few moments as everyone processed what had just been said. Normally, the threats our heroes needed to deal with came in the form of people, even armies of artificial life forms or robots, but in each case it had been some or other form of sentient being. Never before have they been up against the raw forces of nature or the cosmos.

Vicky was flicking the front of her shirt back and forth to circulate air, which interfered with Allan's thinking process, and Edward spoke first: "Do the authorities know about this yet?"

"Yes," came Charlotte's reply, "but they're not worried because the meteor is not particularly big, as far as larger meteors go, and they assume it will break apart once it builds enough friction with the atmosphere."

"And they're… wrong?" Zoë deduced

"This is not just any meteor. This heat we've been having? It's from smaller pieces that don't make it far enough to do any real damage. But they're just a sample of what's to come. The meteor's makeup is incredibly resilient and makes thermite look like popping candy. Around seven tonight when it gets enough heat and air to catch on fire, there will be no stopping it. It will sail through the earth like a bullet through cookie dough, all the while heating it up from the inside. Eventually the entire planet will look the way its mantle does now."

"And what can we do?" asked Vicky.

"That's the part I haven't seen yet.

Leather Jack walked into Professor Tech's laboratory. "Why did you call me over?"

"It appears as though we have been infiltrated," Tech replied, indicating toward a busted robot. "One of the biotroops found this spy drone bearing Nathan Mechse's symbol wandering our corridors."

"Not a very efficient spy drone if it's been caught," Leather Jack smirked. "Still, The System knows where we are now. But Mechse shouldn't think we can't find him, as well."

"Shall I send a show of force?" Tech's request was a mere formality. He knew his boss well enough.

"Do it. It's far too early to be asking questions. Send a mini-frigate with three hundred troops."

"Yes sir."

"Oh, and send our other friends a small gift basket since they won't be joining the fun."

"Affirmative."

Back at the Kidman residence, everyone was brainstorming and trying to figure out a plan of action. They had been joined by Nate Beta-Unit, who had communicated with a satellite that had spotted the meteor, and calculated its point of impact to be over a small, slightly wooded nature reserve not far from the coast. Travel time was not an issue, as they could quickly and easily travel enormous distances by joining hands with Zoë, who would convert their body masses into electrical current and get them close enough in an instant via the power grid or telephone lines.

"How can we hope to face up to this?" Vicky groaned "We have some pretty decent firepower, but to handle a rock plummeting from space..? Could we even reach it before it's too late?"

Edward suddenly had a crazy idea. "We've been up against something greater than we could handle on our own before…"

"You don't mean…" Allan didn't want to complete the sentence

"When The System first rose and cut our numbers in half we were able to defeat Nathan by teaming up with Hazard Inc."

Unthinkably, The Kidman brothers and Leather Jack had had a common goal for a brief time which forced them to cooperate. The result was just barely a victory, and they parted ways as enemies again afterward. And the idea was viable: If they could make use of Hazard Inc.'s resources they may just have had a chance at destroying the chunk of doom that was rapidly approaching the little speck of mud hanging between the stars that they called home.

The thinking session was suddenly interrupted when a crash was heard and a lone biotroop burst through a newly formed hole in the ceiling.

"Speak of the devil. What does Leather Jack want now?"

Zoë reached out a hand and after some violet sparks formed in it she was the first one armed. She coiled her chain around the black-bodied figure's wrist that held its blaster and sent through it an electric current rendering its muscles limp, while the rest of them made for their weapons. The creature lunged at its firearm now lying on the floor with its free hand but a well-placed acid ball from Charlotte's hand rendered it inoperable. Charlotte's fingerless gloves were connected to a stash of smoke, venom and acid bombs via portal technology developed by The System and made available to the heroes courtesy of Nate Beta-Unit. The concept had been a complete success, but The System soon scrapped the idea when they learned that a wormhole larger than five centimetres in diameter could not be generated. But five centimetres was more than enough for Charlotte's purposes.

The biotroop next grabbed a stun gun from its weapon belt with its free hand and swung it, first at Zoë, who jerked her chain loose from its arm so that she could dodge it, and then at Charlotte, who took a small leap backward as well. By now the rest of the team were armed and assembled, and Allan used his trident to grapple the weapon from the troop. The biotroop reached for its next weapon, but a blast of liquid nitrogen from Edward froze its hand stuck to its weapon belt. Before it could use the other hand, the biotroop again found it restrained by Zoë's chain. Vicky used the rope from her grappling hook to pull its legs from underneath it, and the biotroop's artificial life met its end at the blade of Edward's diamond sword. It disappeared in a puff of black dust (They were engineered this way to make cleaning up easier), leaving behind a small, silver device. "I figured Jack was just sending us a message if he just sent one biotroop," Edward remarked. He gave it a nudge and a hologram of Leather Jacks face appeared while a message played:

"So, you've managed to open my present. This is just a courteous request that you do not try to engage with Hazard Inc. for the next few days. Nathan Mechse and his little robots have decided to make a nuisance of themselves, and we need to deal with them. Stay out of our way."

"So, that rules out destroying the meteor…" Zoë concluded

"Perhaps destroying it is not our only option," Vicky mused.

"What do you mean, Hon'?" Allan asked "You think we should try to divert it?"

"No. Remember what Charlotte said?" she answered. "The meteor will become dangerous once it sets alight, so what if we just prevented that from happening?"

"That could work," Charlotte said weakly. Charlotte's ability to see the future was quite effective at predicting various different outcomes based on her actions, as long as she didn't think about it too much. If she let her visions guide her reflexes and instincts she could quite effortlessly achieve a best case scenario, but it was a whole different story once she had to think about what she saw, and especially if she needed to discuss various courses of action with someone else. This did not hold her back, however, and she used as much energy as she could muster trying to come up with a solution to the impending catastrophe.

"I've got an idea!" Edward suddenly said sounding hopeful "Allan! The beam from your trident can put out fires, right?"

"Yes…" This was true. The strange beam that only Allan could generate from the bronze-looking weapon he found on the day he gained his superpowers not only had destructive potential, but also oddly enough had water-like properties, such as being able to cool fires and conduct electricity. Allan could even use his psychokinetic abilities, which otherwise only worked on water, to bend and guide the beam to an extent, but this required too much effort to be realistically practical for anything useful.

"Perhaps if you fired at the meteor, you could cool it down just enough to keep it from flaring up?"

"That sounds like a plan… Only, how do I get up there?"

"You don't! You charge up your trident and ready a beam, then while it's loaded with water-energy you use your hydrokinesis to fly it up to the meteor, and bam!"

"That's… actually a really good idea!"

Soon enough the team was gathered outside, and Allan was holding his trident firmly, focusing his energy into the weapon. He knew he might lose his trident forever if he did this, but with the entire planet in jeopardy, there was no question he had to go forward with it. A cyan glow began to envelop it and, as Allan let go of it, it rose steadily into the air.

"It's working!" gasped Zoë. She lifted herself up onto Edward's back, and planted a loud kiss on his head as if to give a compliment to his brain. Suddenly the glow on the trident faded, and it fell back into Allan's hands.

"What's wrong?" Asked Vicky

"I haven't the faintest idea where to guide it to. I don't know how far away the meteor is, in which direction to send the trident, or how to know if I'm close enough to fire or even remotely aiming at the meteor." Allan said sheepishly.

It was getting hotter by the hour.

"I think I can help a little with that," Charlotte said. You can send it in a direction and I'll look into the future to guide you guiding it."

"I can help, too," said Nate, relinquishing a small object and a monitor. "Mount this tiny camera on the trident sighting along the centre prong, and once the meteor is in range you'll be able to see it on this screen and manoeuvre it accordingly."

Nathan Mechse's airbase dwarfed the Hazard Inc. craft that was headed speedily toward it. The enormous indigo airship was fitted with amazingly powerful thrusters, but the sheer bulk could not hope to escape the mini-frigate charging at it at full speed. But then again, it didn't need to, since it had weapons and armour strong enough to repel even the most militant country's air force. Nathan decided to nip this pesky onslaught in the bud and launched a powerful warhead at his attacker. To his dismay the projectile did not make it halfway to its target before it was blown to smithereens by a flurry of fire from its many surface-mounted turrets manned by biotroops. The next line of defence was to dispatch an army of omegadroids and omegajets, two very efficient variations of A.I. controlled attack robots. The omegajets were shaped roughly like aeroplanes that lacked cockpits and were speedier, while omegadroids had a somewhat anthropomorphic yet bulky appearance, and were designed with firepower and manoeuvrability in mind. The jets reached the invaders first, swiftly circling the ship and subjecting it to rapid fire, and they were soon joined by the droids, which darted erratically back and forth firing powerful plasma blasts from their arm cannons. Several explosions rocked the skies for a few moments, and when the smoke cleared, the mini-frigate was gone.

… But the biotroops weren't. Some clung to their adversaries, others wore jetpacks, and all relentlessly attacked their foes with their wide range of hand-to-hand weapons. Those that weren't shooting at the robots were focusing fire on the airship's stabilisers. Finally Nathan decided he had had enough and deployed a smart bomb, which eradicated friend and foe alike. The Hazard Inc. mini-frigate had left a subtle smoke trail, along which Nathan Mechse plotted a new flight plan.

At last the heroes had a plan of action. Allan wasted no time powering up his makeshift guided missile, and Charlotte used all but the last of her power getting him in the ballpark by shutting her eyes and gesturing direction and speed. A little while before six the menacing red glow of the meteor rose on Nate's screen, which the team watched in awe. "When I have just the perfect shot I'll jab my trident into the meteor, and fire the energy at the same time. That will hopefully be enough to prevent it from combusting." Allan said while he concentrated, waiting for the right moment. Soon enough the meteor took up nearly half of the screen, at which point a flash of cyan eclipsed the red glow, before the visual cut out.

"Stand by," said Nate. "I've just lost the signal in the impact. Give me a moment while I reconnect with the camera." The group held their breaths as beeps and whirrs were heard from Nate, and in a small eternity the image came back online.

There was nothing on the screen but stars. Stars and blackness. "Look…" Edward traced a line across the screen with a jittery index finger. Sure enough, no stars were visible on the bottom half.

"I think my trident may have gotten lodged…" Allan began

To their horror, the black half of the screen became deep brown, which gradually grew red once again.

"What's going on?" Zoë's voice quivered

Charlotte was white as a sheet and had dark circles under her eyes. "Allan's bought us some more time. We have until… four… tomorrow morning." And with that she sank to the ground.

Chaos erupted as everyone began hysterically and simultaneously suggesting new approaches:

"Maybe I can flash-freeze it! Nate, can you get me up there..?!"

"If I can get above it and stun-beam it enough, it might lose friction..!"

"Do you think it can conduct electricity?! What if I generated a magnetic field..?!"

Everyone except Allan, who wordlessly walked back into the house.

Allan sat on his bed in deep thought. He still considered this mostly his fight, since his specialty was water and the enemy in this instance was essentially fire. Fire that came from a rare and particular stone. Now why did that suddenly ring a bell? He wondered. Then he remembered: He had dealt with a rare and particular stone before. The stones that had endowed him with hydrokinesis and the ability to survive under water. Those glowing stones at the bottom of the sea where he had found his trident. Allan had actually taken one from the area. The Kidmans would occasionally keep souvenirs from some of their adventures. Allan had kept the stone at his bedside at first, but he later put it in a trunk under his bed as the sea-green glow it gave off sometimes hindered his sleep. He pulled the trunk out and rummaged through it, but he couldn't find the stone. Allan sorted through the objects one last time by first pushing them all to the left side, and then shifting them over to the right one last time: An empty photo frame, a piece of macaroni art Charlotte made in kindergarten, a redundant-turned-spare power cable, a strange dull chunk of…

At once Allan recognized the stone he'd been searching for. He hadn't noticed it at first because its brightly coloured sheen had completely faded, but when he picked it up he could immediately feel the weight and texture he had gotten to know. The stone was now a dull bronze-ish colour, much like…

Suddenly Allan had an epiphany! He held the stone firmly and focused… And his face lit up.

Edward, having calmed down, was laying the still unconscious Charlotte down on the living room sofa. Charlotte would on occasion faint if she strained her mind reasoning out her premonitions and the various timelines they could set in motion to others too much. She would wake up in a few hours, assuming the world was still in one piece by then. He picked up her hand, which was hanging on the floor, and placed it over her stomach just before Allan came storming out of the hallway and grabbed the back of his collar dragging him outside. "Nate, give me a lift to the beach where I found my trident! Everyone else, meet me at the point of impact! I've got an idea!"

Nate Beta-Unit was acting as a makeshift jetpack speeding Allan toward his destination. Against the now deep red night sky, Allan saw the System airbase hovering over where he knew Hazard Inc. was located, surrounded by Hazard Inc. airships, with occasional explosions flashing that looked like sparks from a distance, and smoke trails getting traced out to and fro. It sounded like a far-off war zone. He also saw little dots zooming about which he recognised as omegajets and omegadroids by their flight paths. "Looks like their rivalry is heating up," Allan remarked.

Upon his arrival at the beach, Allan made straight for the water and dived in. He could feel the energy of the blue-bronze stones drawing his mind towards it. Allan spread out his arms and legs, and pushed himself forward as fast as his hydrokinesis could carry him. Sure enough, he saw the distant glow, and in a few moments he was among them. He slowly neared one of the larger stones, cautiously put an arm toward it and closed his eyes as his hand gently touched the surface, and at once Allan felt a surge of power in his body unlike any he had ever experienced.

Edward and the girls were standing on a small knoll overlooking a part of the reserve. They could see the red light shining in the distance and growing gradually brighter, as it both intensified and drew closer. The brightness made it seem notably larger than it actually was, and the midnight sky was now getting to be quite bright itself. Edward had just opened his mouth to try and break the tense silence by wondering out loud what Allan was planning, not without noting that time was growing short, when they saw Nate Beta-Unit approach in the distance.

"Where's Allan?" Edward asked when Nate finally arrived.

"He will be here shortly," came the reply. "He was just collecting his ammunition."

"Ammu-…" a puzzled Zoë began just as a mighty crash of water was heard from off the coast.

The three humans raced for the shore, but only until they saw where the noise had come from, at which point they're legs stopped working and they rapidly went from a sprint, to a jog, to a saunter, all the while staring in amazement at a massive pulsating orb that had risen out of the ocean. It gently lowered onto the ground until they could get a good look at it. It looked like a giant snow globe, sans snow, made of seawater with Allan in the middle. He was standing on a glowing boulder. Allan hopped off his perch and walked out of the sphere. His eyes shone with the same bluish light as the stone. The same light his trident would give off whenever Allan used his powers.

Allan spoke, his voice calm but loud as a tidal wave. "The stones that gave me my power… They are made from the same materials as my trident. They shine with exactly the same energy as my trident would gain whenever I charged it, and I can manipulate them just as I did my trident… just as I do water. Coming into contact with them again has also strengthened my powers, and I can take this fight into the sky now.

"That's crazy!" Edward barely managed.

Allan's face softened. "Says the guy who went hurtling into a black hole."

"I'm not letting you get burned to death!" Vicky said, sounding less harsh than she was trying to.

"It's going to be okay," Allan stroked the love of his life's raven hair. "If I don't do this, _everyone_ will die."

"What I meant was…" a stronger reply came from the blonde-haired love of Allan's life "… if you get burned, I'll make sure it isn't to death!"

The couple held hands, Vicky keeping her head out of the water, as the gigantic mass of brine, stone and light rose speedily toward the heavens. When breathing became difficult, Vicky indicated to Allan and he let go. She flapped her wings vigorously to hover in place, waiting for her boyfriend's return.

Edward and Zoë looked around. Even if Allan could save the world, the remains of the meteor would most certainly be enough to set the nature reserve ablaze. "If only there was something we could do… but we're stuck down here on the ground."

Zoë stared intently as the trail of steam Allan was leaving behind formed into a large cumulonimbus cloud. "Maybe there is…" she finally said and disappeared into the nearby power line.

She emerged again and handed Edward a box of powdered donuts. "You're going to need these," she said as she stuck her palm upward into the air "… because we're going to need your liquid nitrogen. And lots of it." And she disappeared again as lightning struck her raised-up hand.

Allan had left Vicky behind when air began to grow short, but he did not need any, since he was surrounded by water which he could breathe just as easily. Allan winced as the water around the edges began to boil. At least the power of the stone kept the innermost area of the water globe safe from the unimaginable heat generated by the meteor, but Allan knew had to work sparingly if he was to succeed. At last he drew closer to the meteor. Allan halted his vessel, and then slowly retreated so as to move toward matching the speed of his target. When the two stones, which were coincidentally of similar size, were close enough, Allan could tell it was nearly four from the sparks that began to sizzle on the meteor's surface. Is was now or never. He first shot multiple tendrils of water at the meteor, which hissed harshly in a violent flurry of steam and bubbles. Allan groaned from within the dwindling supply of relief and moisture as salt began to precipitate everywhere. When he knew he could spare no more, he took a slow, deep breath and placed his hand between his feet, with his fingertips against the stone that had brought him here and vice versa. As he slowly brought his outstretched arm forward, the stone followed as though glued to his hand, and when it was finally pointed at earth's cosmic assailant, Allan wailed and all the psychokinetic energy he had mustered from the deep burst from him in a brilliant expanding ring of sea-green light. The two stones collided in cataclysmic flashes of red and cyan sparks, and billowing black smoke and white steam. Rubble and debris scattered chaotically in all directions, but were quickly turned back down towards the ground.

It had looked almost like fireworks, Vicky thought to herself. Her mission was now to find Allan falling amid the debris, save him from plummeting to his death, and tend to his burns. He would almost certainly be unconscious and in dire need of rescue from being crushed by the meteor remains. Vicky soon recognised Allan's limp, charred body flapping furiously at terminal velocity. The largest remaining part of the meteor, still scorching hot, was falling just a few feet above him and slowly gaining, as though pursuing him in a final attempt at vengeance. She shifted out of their way, and in an instant stopped beating her wings so that she, too, began to fall. Allan and the stone quickly overtook her and, just when her speed had nearly matched his, she shone a velocity nullify beam that halted the stone in mid-air, so that it had to restart its acceleration completely. Vicky tucked in her wings and limbs, and dove after her love fuelled by gravity and will. As she approached him she reached out two healing hands, grabbed his body and spread her wings once more. While slowing their descent to break into a glide to push them out from under the hail of scorching rocks, she was bombarded with fragments from the meteor and the sea-stone. Vicky kept her body straight, knowing that if she faltered it would be the end of them both. As soon as she was in the clear she relaxed, and descended gently toward the sea. Her hands were full and there was nothing more she or Allan could do about the remaining searing hail.

Edward could see the flashes of light through a hole in the cloud. Amid bright flashes of sheet lightning Zoë stirred up an electrostatic vortex. As Edward squinted at the sky he saw the meteor had been mostly fragmented into tiny pieces which he knew could do irreparable harm to the area. And they were nearly all being funnelled toward him. Edward swallowed and dusted his hand clean of the powdered sugar from the last donut, before saying two words: "Bring it." Propelling a continuous stream of nitrogen in liquid form, Edward cooled the last of the dwindling wrath of the fiery meteor with agility and precision one can only gain from shooting at 8-bit ducks with an electronic light gun.

In a matter of minutes what had once been one of the greatest threats mankind had ever known was scattered on the dry grass underneath Edward's feet. Another flash of lighting brought the keeper of his heart back to him, and again all was right with the world. They looked out over the landscape that they had just saved. The night sky was dark again, as it should be. There was a brief column of light a few hills away. "That'd be Vicky," Zoë said. "Go fetch them will you, Nate?"

Vicky was hovering high over Allan from where she had flashed the beacon to notify their allies where they were. Allan had been exposed to intensely fluctuating temperatures over the last few moments, and with the autumn chill back the way it was, he was huddled against the largest part of the meteor for warmth while Vicky was up calling the others. It had been too heavy to get absorbed by Zoë's vortex, and fell a ways away. It was now nice and toasty – exactly what Allan needed, especially considering that most of his clothes had been burnt into nothing.

Allan and Edward had made sure that each other were okay, and while the girls were doing the same, Edward gave their last battlefield one more look as he wrapped things up with Nate. "You can call the authorities in the morn…" Edward noticed the first light of dawn "You can call the authorities later. They can decide whether they want to dispose of this stuff, or study it as a possible fuel source, or even ship it back into space for all I care. Let's go home."

Back home, Charlotte met them outside. "Guess whose planet didn't get fried like a marshmallow!" Vicky gloated

"I saw it all while I was passed out. Not bad." Charlotte said casually

"Well, we're exhausted," Edward spoke for everyone. I'm quite sure this would have been much easier if we'd had help from Jack or Mechse. After all, they need this planet in one piece, too."

"They were too occupied with their own problems," Charlotte replied "And that's a good thing. If they had worked together on this, they would have learned what great feats they're capable of as allies, and they'd have joined forces. That would have been an even worse future than a molten planet. I saw it in one of my visions."

"That could not have been a possible future," Edward sounded confused. "They hate each other more than ever! They've been waging Armageddon on each other since the whole meteor mess started!" Charlotte looked away.

"The only way you could have seen a vision of them cooperating," Edward continued as Nate hurried inside "would be if an action on our part could have caused or prevented it."

Charlotte was still silent. Edward's brain was tired, but the silence spoke volumes. He pointed a puzzled finger at her as the first logical conclusion made itself. "You… you did… Somehow this feud between them… it was your doing…"

Charlotte kept avoiding eye contact "My doing? Leather Jack found a System spy drone in his lair, that can't be _my_ doing…"

"Who said anything about a spy drone?! All Jack said was that The System was being a nuisance."

Finally a chuckle escaped Charlotte's lips "Yeah, it was Nate and me. I called on him when I had my first vision of all this and he built a fake spy drone out of a busted bot you kept after our first time dealing with The System."

"And I didn't even wonder where he was at breakfast, or why he knew to find out the meteor's point of impact before he'd even joined us yesterday! Well played, Charlotte. Well played."

But although Charlotte could see the future, even she had her limits. She could not have seen that some of Allan's dead skin that had rubbed off on the biggest remaining piece of the meteor had somehow come back to life, and was bonding with it.


	2. Chapter 2

A mass of living something sped through the endless coldness of space. It was on a mission and was following a faint heat trail, and feared it may already have failed. Yet the blue dot that came into view still appeared habitable, despite the trail undoubtedly having lead on a collision course with the planet given its recent movement patterns, and this brought the something disbelief first and hope second.

Allan Kidman was cleaning up after himself. He'd made quite the mess of saving the world and, although he was certain the authorities would remove the shards of the mysterious sea stone he had tapped into two nights ago from the reserve they were scattered in, a part of him did not want them to study it and believed it belonged in the ocean where he had found it. Of course, he was not alone as his allies insisted on helping, and while they were getting together the smaller pieces that could be carried by hand, Allan gathered the larger ones. The bronze-looking stones were made from the same material as his trident and, like his trident, he could charge them up by touching them and focusing his will. The energy that would build into them had aquatic properties, therefore the stones would now be subject to Allan's hydrokinetic control, which made them easier to transport.

Moments later the team was at the beach close to where the stones belonged. It was low tide, and a fairly level section of the rocky shore was exposed. Edward, Zoë, Vicky and Nate Beta-Unit stood in the half-light of sunset watching as Allan dragged the net holding the stones, shining with energy, along the surface while using his powers to keep them afloat.

When he was finally floating over the correct spot in the abyssal plane, Allan undid the net and poured the stones out, gently discharging them and letting them sink to the bottom. He decided to follow them and make sure they regained their natural glory.

As the bronze chunks of latent power drifted into the depths, Allan saw the water around him grow brighter as he neared their resting place and the others like them. But the stones did not seem to react to the power that surrounded them. They undauntedly sank ever deeper and a pang of guilt shot into Allan's heart as though he had taken something from the mysterious recesses of nature that he can never return. Not on my watch, Allan decided, and he gathered every last sinking shard, powered them up, and raised them back to the same depth as the others. When Allan alleviated his psychic grip on them, they once again began to descend, still unaffected by the energy they bathed in, and Allan brought them back up. Allan did what could best pass as putting his foot down given that he was drifting in the ocean, and began charging the stones even more using his own power. He felt veins bulge in his neck and the sheen of the rocks grew ever brighter until they nearly matched that of their brothers. When Allan felt as though he was squeezing his very superpower out of his body, he bundled the stones together and pushed them forward, so that they collided with one of the others drifting in their place unassisted. Sharp blue-green sparks and a shockwave sent Allan reeling, flipping him over twice, and when Allan composed himself again he realized that the stones were now back where they belonged, the way they belonged.

When Allan returned to the surface he looked up at the sky where he had had his cosmic clash just a few days ago. "I sincerely hope I never need to borrow this power again," he said to himself under his breath.

And that's when he saw it: The unmistakable flash of something entering the earth's atmosphere. Under any other circumstances he would have dismissed it as a regular old shooting star and maybe even made a wish, but he found it all too suspicious that this object entered over nearly the exact place where he and the meteor had faced off.

"Did you guys see that?!" Allan asked with alarm in his voice when he got back to the shore.

"What could be going on over there?" Edward wondered

"We had better find out!" Vicky replied. "It's obviously not another meteor like the one we stopped, but something odd is almost certainly going on!"

It landed. It didn't look like anything yet, but the creature had a polite code of conduct when meeting new life forms which was, in essence, to get to know the locals and fall into their customs. Doing so was always a simple task for the thing, as it was amazingly adept at analyzing new creature's means of communication and their ways of perceiving the world. This was further helped by the fact that this fluid mass had unimaginable sensory abilities, far more than just the five senses humans generally recognize, and had total control over how it wished to perceive them, such that it could detect traces of chemicals as shape and colour, or experience light and heat as vibrations on its outer surface. For example, the first life form it became aware of was tall and mostly brown, with a few fading hints of green. After sampling, analyzing, reverse engineering and testing out a number of plant hormones in a mere instant, the creature deduced that to the current collection of locals the most important details of existence were sunlight, rainfall, nutrients in the ground and the movement of other beings in the vicinity. These were obviously something called "primary producers" and would not prove too useful in its quest, except that it had just learned that this new planet is also home to more animate beings, of which their spectrum of sentience would be more likely to fall in a range that could aid in the cause. However, until such beings were able to be interacted with, convention dictated that the visitor followed the customs of these primary producers.

Fortuitously, five sentient beings were just about to approach.

"Am I the only one seeing a purple tree...?"

The purple tree detected five figures and thoroughly analysed them in little more than a flash. One would generate waves in the air that vibrated delicate structures in what was evidently a sort of main sensory centre of all the other figures, then another would follow suit. It concluded that this was their primary means of communication. Two objects these sensory centres of each figure also appeared to possess parts that reacted to various intensities and wavelengths of light. In addition, there were countless chemical messages darting about within any single figure. In this fashion the tree continued to analyze the new beings until it could practically read their minds to learn and adopt their social conventions. It was essentially learning all there was to know about human biology and behaviour from these individuals. But the more it analyzed the moving creatures, the more perplexing it found the fifth one. It was almost nothing like the others aside from one or two obvious similarities like its physical shape and its use of waves for communication. It was cold, except on the inside, and had no form of chemical messaging taking place inside it despite how many were present within its cohorts. Instead its inner components were riddled with subtle electrical charges bouncing around to and fro. Yet it could evidently communicate with the other four as effectively as they did with one another. The purple tree searched around in one of the libraries it had discovered and decoded at the core of the "sensory centre" in one of the others (which it learned had names which were "brain" and "head" respectively according to these creatures' communication methods) and finally learned that the fifth figure was in fact not even a life form at all, but something called a "robot" or "android". When at last the invader had enough to go by, it shifted into a form that the newcomers might identify with better than a tree. It also began to speak, learning each word anew before speaking it.

"Greetings… humans… and robot"

The reaction that followed was not what the alien had expected. Further investigation revealed that humans are generally comfortable around other humans, but not if they are deep violet and, two seconds ago, looked like a tree.

"Please… do not be alarmed. I… am… an extra-terrestrial," it saw it good to add "and I come in peace."

The earthlings calmed down after a while and cautiously approached the purple figure.

"You… speak English?" Zoë managed

"Yes. I have learned it from you all. I thank you for imparting your knowledge." Came the reply

"What do you mean you learned it from us?" Vicky asked "We've only just met."

"Yes," It said again "I apologize for the delay, but I needed to first decode your brains before I could read them. I have assumed a shape that I believe best suits your kind given some parallels I have drawn with mine.

"You're not wearing any clothes," Allan pointed out awkwardly.

"My kind can survive the vacuum of space. We have no need for thermoregulation at lower temperatures. My cosmoplasmic structure would soak into most fabrics, anyway. I have observed that your android companion is unclothed as well."

"Nate's not human," Edward explained. "He doesn't really have anything that needs… er… covering up."

"The same can be said about me," the creature replied.

And this was true. Although its shape was now decidedly human and unmistakably feminine, it more closely resembled a store mannequin or a children's doll.

"What's your name?" Zoë asked

"And what brings you to Earth?" Vicky chimed in.

The two questions needed some research to be answered.

"I have no name," the alien began. "My kind has no need for them, as we are fluid and do not really function as…" it searched for the word "… individuals. We are all part of a whole that can easily combine into one or separate into many. As you see me here I am a monomer of our people, female by your conventions, but I can easily replicate and form another. However, as I must follow your customs, I will take a name."

"Flo!" Vicky seized the opportunity. "It suits you perfectly since your body is liquid!"

"I will accept the name Flo," She replied. "I detect a… "she paused again as she processed a new concept" play on words which is something some of your kind are fond of, and am honoured that I may incorporate it into my identity."

"Your second question perplexed me until I learned that 'Earth' is not only the collective term for substances that make up your planet's lithosphere, but also the name of your planet itself. I will answer that momentarily, but first allow me to make a small investment into our safety."

Flo sized up Nate for an immeasurably short moment and moved toward the robot in a manner that almost seemed affectionate but more importantly, had anyone considered her knowledge of human customs and that Nate was a machine, suspicious.

"I believe my intentions would be best illustrated like this," she said innocently before placing a hand on either of Nate's shoulders and drawing close. Her lips touched Nate's mouth and in an instant a small chunk of her came loose and disappeared into his insides. His powerful arms pushed her way immediately and with robotic force, a reaction Flo clearly expected because she merely absorbed the force and returned to her humanoid shape.

"A portion of the creature's mass has infiltrated my bodywork," Nate said with an automated calm that meant mild panic. "Liquid damage may be imminent."

"You should run a quick diagnostic and check if all your functions are still operating normally," Edward encouraged.

A moment passed.

"I have detected no hazards to my operation, but something is certainly different," came the result of Nate's scan.

"Can you elaborate on that?" Edward was still concerned

"The specific nature of the effect is difficult to determine," Nate began. "The effect is…" he attempted to formulate a description. "It feels… I feel… I… … feel?"

Edward and the others turned to Flo. "What did you do to Nate?"

"I read an understandable level of alarm from your vitals, but I assure you there is no need. I merely implanted a fragment of myself within his bodywork for the sake of your and my own safety."

"I don't understand."

"I have recognized him as a potential threat but still an ally, and not one I wish to terminate, even if necessary."

The puzzled looks stayed unchanged

"While your robot is indeed benevolent toward our company he remains undeniably weaponized, and being manmade he may be susceptible to human control. The fragment that resides within him now has occupied a cavity within his torso and is establishing partial control over the processors that dominate his decisions. Even if his system is compromised he will be unable to bring me, or any of you, to harm."

Moods changed from puzzled to impressed.

"You gave him a heart?" Allan deduced

"Not a heart per se," Flo answered. "His parts do not require oxygen and he cannot circulate blood. But by the metaphors of your language that is a rough approximation, yes."

There was a brief silence as Nate looked at Flo and learned how astonishment felt

"I am afraid further pleasantries will need to wait." Flo began to answer Vicky's question. "I have come in search of something called the Dark Stone, and by my calculations it ought to have landed in this vicinity, but I cannot be certain because some way into your stratosphere I detected there was a collision and a violent exchange of heat."

"Could you mean the meteor that landed here the day before yesterday?" Vicky ventured what, given the absurdities they had experienced in the past few minutes, was a fresh breath of logic.

"That is possible," Flo answered. "By design its intention was to combust and reach a temperature great enough to destroy your very planet. The signs of interaction that I detected was evidently what saved you all from a fiery death, but you are not out of danger yet!"

"Back up!" Allan wondered if he had heard correctly. "Did you just say the meteor had an _intention_? Like, it was _alive_?!

"Yes," Flo continued to stretch the boundaries of the word "unbelievable". The stone houses a gaseous being of sorts. It is a bare, formless unit of life. By your conventions it might be sufficient to refer to it as a disembodied soul. On its own it is capable of doing little more than propel its vessel through space, and under the effects of your planet's gravity and friction forces, it is totally immobile."

"Where did it come from?" Nate queried

"It was designed by an evil invader to our home planet who was inspired by the malleable consistency and changeable appearance of my kind. The creature within the dark stone is engineered to value nothing above destroying planets that other beings call home. Its creator was dealt with but not before it was able to send the stone into the depths of space. I was tasked with the mission of tracking it down and ensuring it does not bring harm to any being in the universe, but staying on its trail proved a challenge. I was afraid that I may have failed but you and your kind appear to have neutralized the threat, and I cannot describe my relief by your means of communication."

"You said your changeable appearance inspired the creation of the Dark Stone and its inhabitant. Is it like you in a way?" Allan enquired

"Not exactly. It can create itself a form once it can get a sample of living substance from a being with sufficient capable strength. It will then assume a warped appearance based on that of its benefactor and use its frightening power to bring the planet that it finds itself on to ruin! For this reason we must secure the Dark Stone before a creature from your planet comes into contact with it!"

Flo detected a dramatic change in the neurotransmitter levels of her new acquaintances, along with the observation that suddenly none of them were able to make eye contact. Nate, who was new to the concept of emotion, was the first to speak, and reacted quite heftily.

"Allan touched the meteor! He was cold, so he warmed himself on it! Allan, you've doomed us all!"

Flo already knew everyone's names.

"How long ago was this?"

"Yesterday morning."

Flo sensitized her consistency to more accurately detect acceleration and changes in light intensity and measured the rate of the Earth's rotation so that she could know the length of an Earth day. From this she was able to calculate more or less how long ago the Dark Stone had obtained a sample of Allan's skin.

"We haven't a moment to lose!" She added what she had learned was a desperate tone to her voice, which she knew would convey the seriousness of the matter. "Take me to the Dark Stone immediately!"

A being was forming from the meteor and was just about complete. It delighted in its new body, not only because it meant freedom from its vessel, but because of the nature thereof: This new form was made up of trillions of tiny units and within these units were something like tiny energy reactors. It relished as it felt combustion in every one of these cells, as though fires were the very basis of its existence. It cherished fire with every part of its being as that was what it used to carry out its sole purpose: making entire planets heat up so intensely from their core that they disintegrate, killing every living creature that would call them home.

It walked up to the Dark Stone, the meteor that it had been confined to for what seemed an eternity, and ran its hand across the surface. The outer layer of its new body was quite adept at sensing fine details of an object's texture, and sure enough it detected an irregularity that was not there before; there were three indentations in the Dark Stone that seemed to have been created by… something. There was a sudden flash of a memory of a blue-green light, and of pain and coldness. Of being jabbed by… a weapon. A long, slender object with three prongs. It took a simple deduction to conclude that this was a weapon belonging not only to the one that had thwarted the creature's first attempt at incinerating the planet it now found itself on, but also the one who had gifted it with the blueprint for its new body. The dark entity decided to follow suit, and create a weapon of its own.

Using its bizarre heated touch, it softened and broke off a large piece from the Dark Stone. From this it moulded a long, slender object with three prongs, not entirely unlike that of its past assailant.

At that moment the creature heard a rustling behind it. It flung itself around and saw six figures, five of which stopped in awe.

The heroes were stunned to see something like a replica of Allan, but with deep red skin and flames for hair, and a figure lacking in certain details of a fashion similar to Flo, and wielding what looked more like a black pitchfork than a bronze trident.

"This thing will destroy your planet if we don't extinguish it!" Flo exclaimed as she stormed the dark duplicate of Allan Kidman. She stretched out an arm, which continued to stretch until it was near her target's head, and made fist into which she fed more of her cosmoplasmic material, but at the same time she condensed the consistency of her hand so that it did not enlarge, but instead hardened. The creature calmly turned its face toward Flo and raised a hand from which a ball of fire burst and travelled a short way as it expanded. Flo's arm returned to normal as she flinched and the fireball shot through her shoulder, singing off a piece and turning the edges dark brown, almost black. Flo collapsed and was immediately caught by Nate Beta-Unit, who found himself unable to do anything else despite all his processors' first priority being to face up to this Dark Allan.

Next, Allan stepped forward, confidently charging power in his trident. "Let me give you a very basic lesson about how some things work here on earth: Water puts out fire."

Allan pointed his trident straight at his opponent's face, but the cyan light it generated stirred a painful memory in the alien and it quickly ducked to the side. The beam just barely grazed the side of its head and the effect was as though a part of it went bald. Its face turned vile with rage and it raised its pitchfork. A bright red beam of fire shot from the centre prong and Allan just barely dodged it. The smoke stung his eyes and he could not keep them open, and Allan fell back into a sitting position. The thing swept another stream of flames across the floor between them, separating him from his attackers in a burning wall and badly charring Allan's foot, and rocketed away on a fiery jet of energy.

"We have to go after him!" Flo insisted. "If we give him enough time he will charge up enough heat in his weapon to fulfil his purpose of destroying your planet!"

"Are you going to be okay?" Nate asked. The level of concern in his voice was almost frightening to his allies who knew him as a cool and calculated machine.

Flo walked to a nearby tree, broke off a few leaves and absorbed them into her body. "I will recover in due time as long as I don't alter my shape for a while. I do not fare well at high temperatures. It is one of a few weaknesses my otherwise resilient composition possesses."

"You said you followed a heat trail to find our planet. Could you pick it up again?" Edward asked while Vicky was healing his brother.

"Yes. We must give pursuit immediately! Once he is satisfied that he has is isolated, he will begin storing energy in his weapon. When he has gathered enough earth will be a mere jab away from bursting at its seams!"

As Flo's shoulder slowly grew back and pinched off the blackened fragments which fell to the ground one by one, her strength steadily returned and the speed of their chase gradually increased. And as their movement speed picked up slowly from a hobble to a jog, the humans tried to properly introduce themselves to the newcomer in the little time they had to talk, and tell her all about their abilities, their enemies and their other allies, but they found she had already learned the long and short of it all when she read their brains on their first meeting.

Allan proactively gathered every bead, film and droplet of moisture he could sense as they ran, building up an orb of water that grew in size as they followed the trail. There was no way his dark duplicate was going to take him by surprise again.

When the intensity of the heat trail reached a certain level Flo held up a hand and everyone stopped. The earthlings winced as a protrusion popped out of Flo's head and grew like an antenna, snaking along the last few feet of the trail. When it came back, the humans and the robot felt words being written by Flo's telepathic equivalent to handwriting on their brains.

"He's in a clearing just beyond these bushes. His back is turned and he possesses only the same senses as you four humans, so if we're silent we might be able to sneak up on him. He has nearly built up enough power so we need to act fast. Once things get too hot I will be of no use to you, so I will need to keep my distance. All you need to do is put out the fire on his head and he will retreat formlessly back into the Dark Stone."

The six allies crept silently at their target. There was not a throat without a heart in it and everyone was waiting for the right moment, which they were certain they would somehow know when it arrived. Considering the state of everyone's nerves, it would probably just have been the moment that the first one of them cracked.

But the first crack was not that of a human. Or of a robot, or of a purple liquid alien. It was a twig. As these things go, you could be sneaking up on someone in a meadow completely devoid of trees, surrounded by two hundred square miles of desert, and a lone, dry twig would somehow find its way under your foot at the very moment you are about to make your move.

In a split second Dark Allan turned his head and unleashed what power he had built up in an expanding dome with explosive force. Despite how long it had taken Dark Allan to muster all this firepower, he knew that it would be much easier to build up again from scratch than it would be to spare any expenses terminating the incessant nuisance that would not cease to pester him. When the dome covered nearly three quarters of the clearing, it stopped expanding and remained in place, a burning shell of flames that would baffle any scientist that laid eyes on it.

The burst of energy had knocked back all of Dark Allan's assailants, and they found themselves singed and separated from him by an impenetrable wall of fire. All except Allan: The section of the explosion that had crashed toward him was absorbed by the watery shield he had built up on his way there, which had vaporized at the same time. Nate had dived in front of Flo at the very moment the dome burst forth and protected her from the heat.

So it happened that Allan was alone, face-to-face with his evil opposite, and at a grave disadvantage. In the burning inferno-dome Allan was literally and figuratively out of his element, with no water in the grass, no water in the air, not even any water in the soil. Allan could even feel how the moisture in his body was rapidly forsaking him through his pores, not even bothering to show up in liquid phase and moisten any of his skin. Allan felt light-headed, his vision was blurred by the smoke and the heat haze, and his movements were sluggish. Every breath Allan took felt like he was inhaling hotsauce, and he actually found himself wondering if he might survive longer if he didn't breathe altogether. He had to squeeze out every ounce of his coordination to just barely dodge any of Dark Allan's attacks, and even so Allan could only gain enough momentum by intentionally stumbling around and letting gravity and his balance reflexes do most of the work. With the great effort that even the most basic movement seemed to require, it was a tall order to do so much as raise and point his trident, let alone charge it up or fire a beam. Allan decided instead to try and draw some of his own dwindling moisture from his skin and try to attack with that, reasoning that using his hydrokinesis would take less effort, but he immediately regretted trying, as any moisture he managed to pull out simply fizzled away.

Allan's loved ones were sick with worry. They could barely look in the direction of the flaming inferno without feeling like their faces were being grilled off, and even if they strained enough to face it, they could not see through the flames. The first thing Edward did when he realized what was going on was dart straight for the dome, but he was quickly snagged and pulled back by the wrists by Vicky's rope and Zoë's chain. "We want to help him, too!" Vicky comforted "But you'll be of no use to him as charcoal!" Zoë reassured.

Nate Beta-Unit returned from the nearby lake. He had pumped all the propane in the sub-tanks for his wrist-mounted flamethrowers back into his main propane tank, and filled the sub-tanks with water. He was trying feebly to douse some of the flames, but to no avail.

"Flo!" Edward pleaded, running out of both time and ideas and growing desperate for a new perspective. "I only just met you earlier today, but I know your intelligence is far greater than any of ours! Please! Don't you have any idea how we can get in there and help my brother? I don't even know if he's still alive!"

Flo calmly considered the situation and stated the obvious. "Your problem is that your brother is stuck behind a wall of fire with the Spirit of the Dark Stone."

"Yes!" Edward replied, deciding to see where this went. "And it's not like any of us can move through walls! Well, that's not entirely true. Zoë can pass herself and others through walls, but only if they conduct electricity."

"Then why doesn't she?" Flo asked

"Why doesn't she what?"

"Move through the wall that conducts electricity."

Edward could not believe how obvious the answer had been. Fire is nothing more than a form of ionized plasma, which is a particularly effective conductor of electricity, which means that Zoë could simply convert all of their bodies into electric current, and pass them through the flames to the inside like any other conductive wall.

Zoë, Edward, Vicky and Nate stood in single file with their hands joined. They started running towards the fiery enclosure while Zoë swung her chain in a circle. When the heat became unbearable Zoë lashed her chain forward and the four of them disappeared in a bright light. One edge of the chain touched the flames and the path was clear for the three humans and one robot, who had taken the shape of an electrical current, to surge through the otherwise impenetrable barrier that separated them from what was so far turning out to be an unfair, one-sided clash.

Allan ducked a swipe from Dark Allan's pitchfork and fell over sideways to dodge a stream of flames similar to a flamethrower. Dark Allan plunged his fork at Allan from above and Allan's only escape for it was to roll away. He struck his hip on a protruding rock and instinctively curled up like a millipede from the sudden pain. After wrenching his fork from the dry soil, Dark Allan boldly marched toward his exhausted, temporarily immobilized opponent and gripped his weapon. It was time to end this.

Zoë gritted what could pass for her teeth while in electric form and boosted the current as far as she could. She had been able to charge along her chain to get through the hottest area on the outside of the wall, but she did not have this luxury on the inside, on account of having left her weapon behind. When she felt her last few nanoseconds as electric current approaching she activated a static blast behind the train of allies that pushed them forward a few more inches, and they cleared the flames without too much harm coming to them save for getting their shoe soles scorched and the edges of their clothes singed. When they materialized inside Dark Allan's self-made enclosure, the three humans nearly collapsed from the heat. But they didn't have time to give in to the limitations of their physical capabilities, especially when they saw what was about to happen to Allan. The four new challengers acted quickly. Vicky flung her grappling hook and it dealt a sharp blow to Dark Allan's phalanges, making him lose his grip and fumble awkwardly at his weapon, which discharged in no useful direction. With a well-timed tug of her rope, Vicky managed to snag his wrist, but this was a mistake as Dark Allan sent a pulse of heat from his shoulders to his fingertips which melted the rope in less than a second.

While this was happening, Edward was preparing to turn the tide of the battle. He sent a fine spray of liquid nitrogen in all directions which immediately and drastically lowered the temperature back to a bearable level. It felt to Allan as though life itself was creeping back into his body and he sprang to his feet. He was immediately met by Nate, with two sub-tanks filled with lake water which he sprayed directly at him. The relief was indescribable. Allan hydrokinetically directed the water at his own face, drinking up as much as he could and cooling himself with the rest. It tasted awful, and was probably poisonous, having been contaminated with propane, oil and who knows what else, but Allan didn't care. He could get Vicky to fix up any ill effects he sustained later.

When Allan had had his fill, he redirected the stream at Dark Allan, surrounding him in a vortex. At the same time, Vicky came to his side and healed all his burns and bruises. When he was satisfied that Dark Allan was surrounded by enough water, Allan brought his palms together swiftly and the airborne whirlpool clamped inward. There was a moment of silence, and in a violent hiss the vortex burst into nothing but steam and smoke.

Dark Allan was still standing, and his eyes were burning with wrath, but with the team regrouped he was suddenly outnumbered, and he had to put his anger aside to be on the evasive. Dark Allan used a few rocket bursts in his feet dodging lightning bolts, a diamond sword and a trident beam, and threw a few quick fireball attacks from his fingertips that did little more than scramble his assailants around. But all this was done merely to stall for time as he was charging up another powerful attack in his pitchfork. He knew his best chance would be to pick them off one by one, and he took a guess at which one would go down the easiest. As he ducked, dodged and scrambled, the heroes thought they were gaining the upper hand, but in fact Dark Allan was guiding their movements. Watching them. Herding them. Soon enough he found himself facing Zoë, with the rest surrounding him. Dark Allan unleashed another expanding dome, but this one was different from the previous one. Because he did not have enough time to store as much energy, it was short lived, serving only to knock his enemies over and stun them for a few seconds. It also wasn't a full circle, and it left Zoë standing, facing him alone.

When Edward regained his senses he saw Dark Allan holding his pitchfork in front of his face and pointing it at Zoë, breathing fire into its handle. Zoë stood motionlessly, displaying a brave face. Edward saw the pitchfork light up and he knew Dark Allan was about to unleash a massive blast of fire on his beloved. He sprinted to her aid as the next few events appeared to take place in slow motion: As sparks began to form on the prongs of the fork, Edward dived at Zoë. It was at that very moment he caught Zoë's eye, and as she turned toward him her expression changed from determination to alarm to pre-emptive remorse. She raised up a hand and Edward saw her mouthing the words "I'm sorry" as a small orb of ball lightning formed between her fingers. She tilted her hand toward Edward and the ball detonated, creating a shockwave that pushed Edward back. His eyes forced shut as he landed on his backside, and the last thing he saw as they closed was Zoë disappearing in a cloud of fire.

And the first thing Edward saw as he opened them again immediately was Zoë materializing, foot first, on the other end of Dark Allan's pitchfork. At the sight of the girl he had just underestimated flying towards him at lightning speed, Dark Allan could not help but flinch, turning his face away, and a kick to the side of the head knocked him out cold. The fire dome vanished, the heat haze dissipated, and the smoke cleared. Allan stepped forward, raised his trident, and drowned Dark Allan's flaming head in the harsh blue light of his weapon. The fire died in a billow of smoke, which gathered and retreated into the pitchfork.

Flo came running up to them as Vicky was tending to their injuries. "It is done. The evil being has been confined to the Dark Stone once again, or at least this small piece of it, and your planet is safe. Thank you for aiding me in my duty."

"If you're done, does that mean you have to go back home?" Zoë asked, and noted to her awe how Nate's face appeared to fall at the question

"My work is not finished," the alien replied. "The Dark Stone will remain a threat to all life in the universe. I am to stay in its proximity and ensure the villain is not released for the entirety of my existence. As long as it remains on this planet, as will I."

"Well, I think I can help." Edward carefully coated the black weapon in a thick layer of titanium. "I know an archaeology head who's keeping a dangerous relic safe for us. I'll ask him to keep this with it."

Nate bashfully approached Flo. "Ms Flo, if you need a place to stay, I live in a garage of sorts with plenty of space. We can get you a tank to sleep in… or a vase if you prefer…"

Flo was getting the hang of human neurotransmitters and gave a delighted chuckle. "I would love to! I haven't had a home for more of your Earth years than you would care to guess!"

"Well, Nate," Vicky smiled "You're basically starting a whole new life now that you've got a heart and feelings and stuff, and a cute new roommate... Are you nervous?"

"A little. But I think I'll just go with the Flo."


	3. Chapter 3

A school bell rang and a mass of teenagers hurriedly shoved books into school bags.

"Don't forget your projects are due tomorrow!" the teacher called out above the voiceless noise. "And Miss Kidman, please stay behind for five minutes. I'd like to discuss something with you!"

Charlotte gave a mild groan: she had been looking forward to eating her lunch and now recess was delayed an extra five minutes.

"What's up, Miss Mullins?" Charlotte asked when all of the noise had migrated to the outside and the classroom was notably quiet.

"It's about your classmate, Miss Burnet." The teacher began.

"Explosibeth?" Charlotte chimed automatically.

Elizabeth Burnet had earned the unfortunate nickname Explosibeth on account of her dangerous temper. The point-and-whisper type student would often remark how she could explode at what they considered nothing at all.

"It's a teacher's duty, primarily, to educate children. But we also have a duty to see to their emotional and psychological wellbeing. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how dangerous an unstable, lonely child can be. Thank the stars we have gun laws in this country." The teacher continued.

"So what's this got to do with me?" Charlotte asked.

"You're a pretty easygoing kid," Mullins explained. "Maybe you can extend a friendly hand toward her."

"Become her friend because a teacher told me to?" the request felt as weird and sad as it sounded.

"I know it's not how things usually work, but sometimes an unusual situation calls for an unusual course of action. if anyone can pull this off, you can."

"I'll give it a shot, Teach'." Charlotte answered and turned to leave.

"One more thing," Mullins added before Charlotte was outside the classroom, "Maybe not call her Explosibeth?"

"Mind if I sit?"

Elizabeth looked up from her lunch and noticed Charlotte standing beyond the table. "Go ahead." She said plainly and Charlotte made herself comfortable as she set down her plate.

"Pasta today," Charlotte said as she eagerly twisted her fork to load it with spaghetti. "I am officially glad I got out of bed this morning."

"Not to be rude, but where are your usual friends?" Elizabeth asked.

"I dunno," Charlotte answered. "Probably having an emergency gossip meeting. I felt like sitting with someone new today." She explained chirpily.

"Fair enough," Elizabeth said as she returned her attention to her lunch.

"So what are you doing after school?" Charlotte asked as she chewed on a mouthful of starch and cheese.

"I'm heading home. I've finished my project, so some of my non-existent friends are coming over so we can play some video games together." She answered nonchalantly.

"I say blow 'em off and come hang out with me instead." Charlotte said with a grin.

"What games do you have?"

"Do you really have superheroes for uncles?" Elizabeth asked as they were strolling home from school.

"I wouldn't call them superheroes, but kind of, yeah. Wanna meet 'em?" Charlotte asked, finally having found a way to appeal to her newly assigned friend.

"Would it be alright?" Elizabeth answered with a question of her own.

"Of course!" Charlotte answered. "They're not the coolest guys you'll ever meet, but they're nice enough."

Upon arriving at the Kidman residence, Charlotte noticed a strange vehicle in the driveway. "Looks like we've got visitors." She remarked.

The pair of youths walked into the kitchen to find Allan and Edward conversing with an unknown man.

"Hi, guys," Charlotte said casually as she strolled through the doorway. "This is Elizabeth, from school."

"I'd prefer if everyone called me Bessie" Elizabeth requested.

"Nice to meet you." Edward greeted. "Listen, kids. Would you mind going into the living room and waiting there? We're discussing something confidential."

"And don't stand around the corner and eavesdrop," Allan added as the girls walked out.

Charlotte and Bessie were in the middle of a race when Bessie suddenly paused the action.

"What is it?" Charlotte asked, mildly disappointed at being interrupted just as she was about to deploy a yellow shell into the race.

"I just can't help but wonder what that conversation in the kitchen is about."

"Oh, that," Charlotte said plainly. "A while ago my uncles fought a fire being and sealed it in its own weapon. The people looking after the weapon need my uncles to take over guarding it for a few days because the place where it's supposed to be kept is being renovated."

"You could hear all that from all the way over here?" Bessie asked sounding quite impressed.

"Nope." Charlotte answered. "I planned on eavesdropping on Edward later when he tells his girlfriend."

"You really _can_ see the future? I thought it was just a rumour!" Bessie exclaimed.

"Yeah, kids have this way of believing all the wrong rumours." Charlotte remarked.

"So you're like a superhero too?" Bessie deduced.

"Insofar as my uncles are, you could say that." Charlotte conceded.

"Can I become a superhero?" Bessie asked hopefully.

"Sure. All you need is really good bad luck." Charlotte joked as Bessie resumed the game.

"So how much of that did you get?" Edward said as he entered the living room where his niece and her new friend were playing video games.

"All of it." Charlotte said without taking her eyes off the screen.

"Darn it." Edward swung a fist past his torso. "we won't have to kill…" he struggled with the name.

"Bessie." Charlotte assisted.

"Bessie, will we?" Edward finished.

"I won't say a word! Promise!" Bessie guaranteed.

"Wanna go see the creature's weapon?" Charlotte asked later when they had grown tired of the racing game for the day.

"Would that be all right?"

"As long as we don't touch it the thing can't get out, so it shouldn't be a problem."

After making their way to the safe, Charlotte entered the combination and the door swung open. Dark Allan's pitchfork was still encased in titanium which isolated it and made it safe for handling.

"Cooool." Bessie admired the gleaming shell. "There's really a demon in here?" she asked.

"A more accurate term would be 'alien'." Charlotte corrected. "Let's peek inside." She said, pulling at the wrist of one of her special fingerless gloves.

Like magic, and before Bessie could protest, a vial containing a powerful acid appeared in Charlotte's hand. She used it to eat away at the casing until a portion of the dark material became visible.

"Stop!" Flo's voice rang through the room. Turning shapeless, she blasted herself in between the two girls and engulfed the exposed pitchfork into her body.

"Flo, what are you doing?" Charlotte said desperately. "We're not supposed to touch that thing directly or the creature will form a body again!"

"It's all right." Flo defended. "I have full control over my molecules so none of them will stay behind on the substance. Also, my composition will notice any traces of it should it try to bond with me directly, and eliminate the threat before there is any danger." Her expression turned stern "The two of you are acting irresponsibly. Exposing the dark stone could throw this planet and many others back into jeopardy. You should feel shame."

There was a reason Bessie was known as "Explosibeth" at school, and this reason was now on the brink of being illustrated. Bessie figured since her friend was the one who opened the weapon and she had had no part in it, there was no reason for Flo to reprimand her. She was one stern look away from snapping. The next moment Flo provided this stern look.

Without her thinking about it, the fingers on Bessie's left hand met its palm and her fist whistled through the air before sinking into what passed for Flo's jaw. Flo barely moved.

"What are you?" Bessie asked as she pulled her hand out of Flo's face and it returned to its usual shape.

"I am not just one thing." Flo answered. "I fathom your indignance at being rebuked, but you must understand, my actions are geared toward keeping this world and others safe. I will take the weapon to Edward so he can restore the coating. Please return to your games."

Charlotte had just changed up the game in the console and sat down when Nate Beta-Unit sounded an alarm.

"What does that mean?" Bessie asked audibly suppressing her panic.

"Bad guys." Charlotte explained as she stood up and began to leave. "Stay put."

"What do we have today?" Charlotte asked Allan as they met in the hallway.

"Brains and brawn." Allan answered, charging his trident and levitating it above his head as they ran.

Sure enough, as they exited the front door they were met by Professor Tech and Mayhem. The former carried a rifle-like device and the latter carried his most dangerous weapon of all – a pair of fists.

"What do you want?" Allan asked the intruders as Edward came out of the house and joined him.

"We're on a retrieval mission. One of our scouts saw some people drop off a trinket that looked rather important. The boss decided he needs it."

"Go back to your boss and tell him he can't have it." Allan retorted as he stiffened his psychic grip on the trident gently bobbing above his head.

"That's not one of the options," Tech replied. "You give it to us, or we take it by force."

Tech fired an energy blast which Allan deflected by lowering his trident in front of him and spinning it. Charlotte threw a ball of acid hoping to damage Tech's weapon but it was intercepted by a second blast which spilled its contents on the driveway.

Edward lobbed a ball of red phosphorous which caught fire in mid-air. Mayhem swatted it aside with the back of his hand but some of it stuck and granted him a flaming punch along with a steady source of pain which, as Edward was now well aware, was useful in building both Mayhem's rage and strength.

As Mayhem motioned toward Edward Vicky arrived overhead and slowed him down with her beam. Zoe appeared from a nearby power line and launched a surge of lightning at Mayhem before he could regain movement. Mayhem dropped as a normal person would upon being tazed. His nails dug into the ground as he pushed himself back up to his feet.

Tech threw a switch on his weapon and it now fired a narrow blue tractor beam. The beam gripped Edward, who scrambled as it slowly dragged him toward the corrosive acid from Charlotte's earlier attack.

Noticing his brother's peril, Allan rushed toward Edward and grabbed his arm, trying to resist the pull of the beam, but its influence spread to Allan and now both of them were being dragged. Vicky realised this and used her beam to hold them in place for as long as she could. Her efforts paid off as the weapon overloaded and shut itself off. As Tech retreated to hurriedly repair the damage the five were left to face Mayhem together.

Meanwhile inside the house Bessie heard movement in the hallway. She peered around the corner and noticed a small drone flying through the house. As silently as she could she followed it to try and learn what it was looking for. Sure enough it happened upon Flo and, after a quick scan, located its target within her liquid structure. It extended a metal claw which attempted to grab the object just a few inches beneath her surface, but she realised this and hardened herself into a stone. The next moment the drone emitted a shrill sound which did little more to Bessie than hurt her ears, but it was pitched at Flo's resonant frequency and her shape began to wobble with the sound waves, before shaking loose from the object it guarded and oozing weakly into a purple puddle across the floor. The drone claimed its spoils – the casing of which Edward had already managed to repair – and returned along the path from which it had come.

Bessie's mind raced for an idea and found one. She dove onto the drone hoping to weigh it down. She had overestimated her own body weight and the drone flew on unhindered.

"Looks like we got what we came for." Tech said as he noticed the drone return with its metallic loot. "And a bonus hostage. It's not every day you get something for free."

Having repaired his weapon, he threw another switch and at the pull of the trigger it set off a blinding light. The heroes reeled as their sight was reduced to nothing for a few seconds. A few seconds was all the villains needed to seize their new captive and return to their craft which sped back to their base of operations.

"We need to go after them." Edward pointed out the obvious once everyone's sight had returned. "For one thing, Bessie's parents will be worried if they don't hear from her. For another, they took the Dark Stone and the thing inside it. We need to get it back as soon as we can or the planet could be at risk of getting cooked all over again.

The heroes gathered their wits and prepared their weapons before setting out for Hazard Inc. headquarters.

"Explain something to me, Professor." Leather Jack was impatiently tapping his foot as he held his hands buried in the pockets of the leather jacket that gave him his name. "When did Hazard Inc. become a babysitting service?"

Mayhem was gripping Bessie's hands tightly behind her back and as much as she squirmed and kicked his grip would not slack. Lucky for her he also covered her mouth because she was spouting muffled insults that would have caused even Leather Jack to raise an eyebrow.

"It's a hostage." Tech explained simply. "We can use her as leverage when- "

"We don't take hostages!" Leather Jack thundered. "We take test subjects, targets and victims!"

"Do you want me to… take care of her?" Tech asked.

"Not now." Jack answered. "I haven't prepared a cleanup team. Stuff her in a capsule. I'll deal with her later."

Zoe welded a vent grating back in place with an arc from two of her fingertips: if anyone in the evil organisation noticed anything out of place they would have known where to start searching. Like so many times before the group of seven made their way through the labyrinthine tunnels above the Hazard Inc. base. Charlotte led the way as she could use her gift to map out the route that allowed them to go into the deepest reaches of the base without detection.

Stasis capsules were meant to keep sedated subjects suspended in fluid. Since Bessie was neither sedated nor suspended in fluid it did not take her long to cause enough damage for the capsule to break open. She lowered herself back down to the floor, shook a large oblong panel loose from the damaged capsule and started – as she would put it – "wrecking stuff". The noise alerted a wave of Biotroops and they poured into the laboratory where Bessie was laying waste to everything she could see. When she noticed the artificial lifeforms she laid waste to them as well. Some were batted into exposed wires or pointy shards of broken equipment, some were slammed into others of their kind, and some had their heads knocked clean off. They outnumbered her before long, however, and she made a break for the exit after throwing her temporary weapon at the nearest few.

Running as fast as her legs would carry her, she set off multiple alarms and more and more Biotroops came from everywhere.

Meanwhile Leather Jack and professor Tech were discussing their newly acquired pickings.

"So why all the fuss about a solid hunk of steel?" Jack asked.

"It's neither steel nor solid." Tech explained. "The metal is a casing for something inside. I'll corrode the shell away and see what we have."

Sure enough, the casing was removed and the pair of villains looked at the now exposed weapon of Dark Allan.

"Is that a black pitchfork?" Jack asked.

"It certainly _looks_ like one." Tech observed. "My guess is its real value lies in the material that composes it. I could put a sample of it into my Mass Spectrometer so I can analyse it, but seeing as it was cased in metal I can only assume it's harmful to the touch."

"Have a Biotroop do it." Jack suggested. Tech's claws rattled across a keyboard and the local Biotroop Producer created a fresh artificial life form which lifted the weapon and carried it to a workbench where it would break off a tiny sample for analysis.

The inhabitant of the Dark Stone stirred. It finally felt living tissue on its vessel again. Without a second thought it poured out and sampled the new form it would occupy. This genetic code was simple and replicating it was much quicker than was the case with its previous benefactor. In less than a minute what looked like a deep red Biotroop took shape, the back of its neck and arms ignited and a pair of glowing eyes appeared as if switched on by means of an unseen dial as the being came to its feet. A prime desire reawakened inside its mind, but this new mind was much simpler than the previous one and all it could comprehend was whatever command was transmitted to it from a Hazard Inc. computer or Jack's voice directly. The fire in the dim laboratory light reflected off Leather Jack's dark sunglasses.

"Most fascinating," Jack said as a smile fissured his lips, exposing the teeth that gripped his cigar. "I'm sure we'll have quite a bit of fun with this one…"

Charlotte suddenly stopped leading and stared ahead blankly.

"What is it?" Vicky asked. "Why did we stop?"

"For some reason we can go just about anywhere now." Charlotte answered. "It's like all the Biotroops are…" she paused as she played through the options in her mind one more time.

"Gone?" Edward completed her sentence.

"Y- Wait, no." She corrected. "They're all coming together. I think they're swarming Bessie!"

Bessie swung her arms violently as she tried to keep the Biotroops at bay. She was starting to grow fatigued from trying to run and fight at the same time while outnumbered. Eventually a few of the artificial lifeforms managed to restrain her. The next moment a thin, purple liquid slipped in between Bessie's arms and the hands of her captors. The mysterious liquid suddenly hardened and expanded all at once and forced Bessie out of the inescapable grip. She fell to the ground as the Biotroops were dragged away by the now solid purple film which contracted and revealed itself to be Flo. Her companions were assembled behind the space she now occupied and they then stormed the Biotroops that had attempted to capture Bessie moments earlier.

"Go! We'll take care of these guys!" Charlotte called out above the ruckus as she shattered a capsule of unknown chemicals on the head of an unlucky Biotroop, causing it to attack its allies.

"Before you go, take this!" Nate said in an amplified voice and launched a small circular object in Bessie's direction which she caught. "It's a tracking device. If you get lost we'll come find you. Just keep moving and find a place to hide if you can!"

Allan loaded his trident with energy and guided it prongs first through multiple Biotroops. Edward slashed a few, froze a few in place and blasted a few with plasma. Zoe electrocuted chains of them at once while Vicky hooked one at the end of her rope and swung it into others. Flo stretched herself into a wide, thin shape, wrapping herself around several troops at once and crushing them in an instant. Charlotte hurled bombs of poison and acid which had all manner of unpleasant effects and Nate used his arsenal of ranged weapons to shoot Biotroops down in scores. The massive, overwhelming hoard of artificial lifeforms that had attempted to overpower Bessie was now being cut down like a massive lawn getting mowed after standing unattended for a month.

No longer plagued by enemies on all sides, Bessie came upon her second wind and was now making her way through the Hazard Inc. corridors looking for an exit or a place to hide. She felt like wrecking more of the base – she certainly felt they deserved it given the way they had treated her – but she did not feel like drawing attention to herself again. Finally, she came upon something that could have allowed her the chance to escape or a place to hide, as well as an opportunity to damage some Hazard Inc. equipment: a door with an automatic lock mechanism. She doubled back and grabbed a chair from a desk she passed by earlier and returned to the door before letting loose. Holding the chair by the legs, she beat the door's lock mechanism with the back rest until something gave way and the door hung open. Bessie put the chair down and passed through the newly accessible doorway.

"Is there no end to your pestering?" Bessie jumped at the sound of Jack's voice. To her surprise she had stumbled upon the very control room she had been removed from earlier and the villains were still prodding at the Dark Stone.

"Looks like it can't be helped. I'll have to deal with her now. Mayhem!"

Mayhem secured Bessie in a grip and tied her hands and feet together so she was unable to go anywhere in a hurry. The evidence of a new idea contorted Jack's face into a smile.

"Who needs a cleanup team if a single biotroop with a broom can sweep away ashes?"

Bessie's heart was now pounding in her throat.

"You there! Firetroop! Torch this brat!"

Edward and the others arrived just in time to see the red Biotroop raise its palm up at Bessie and veil her in flames so hot they could feel the heat just by looking at them.

"Bessie!" Charlotte called out above the roar of the flames and fell weakly to her knees, staring ahead with her mouth open but unable to say anything. She prepared herself for the horrific sight of her new friend as a heap of ash.

The flames subsided and Charlotte's eyes adjusted to the dim light of the control room. She caught her breath and rubbed her eyes to make sure she saw what the thought she saw. There, right in front of her, was Bessie without so much as a blister.

Flo was the first to deduce what had happened and in an instant transmitted the message directly into Bessie's mind.

 _When I contained the exposed stone, some of the creature tried to bond with my cosmoplasm, but I was able to defeat it. Without me noticing, the defeated traces entered your blood stream when you tried to hit me and acted like a sort of vaccine, enabling you to resist and create severe heat_

"What?!" A moment of disbelief passed through Bessie's mind, but there were more pressing matters at hand. Bessie quickly gained control of her heating ability and dashed about the control room with her hands extended. Everything she touched melted or burst into flames, so she made a point of touching everything that looked expensive. Eventually she came upon the Dark Stone which began to burn with a heat that overwhelmed everyone except Bessie. The villains turned tail and fled while the heroes noticed in horror that the Dark Stone was finally starting to burn as it was intended to do. Nate was first to act and strained his resources to create a force field around the burning rock and its immediate surroundings.

"What's going on?" Bessie asked, noticing the horror on everyone's faces.

"The heat of this burning stone could incinerate the planet. We have to put it out immediately!" Nate explained.

"Let me in! Maybe I can do something!" Bessie suggested.

"No!" Edward protested. "You came into our house, and that means we're responsible for your safety. I can't allow it."

"I'll be fine!" Bessie urged. "You saw how that blast didn't harm me earlier. Flo says I'm immune to fire!"

"Is she really?" Edward asked, and Flo nodded.

"Okay." Edward conceded. "Get in there and do your thing. But hurry up. I'm not sure Nate can take much more of this."

A momentary wave of unimaginable heat washed over the company as Bessie slipped through a temporary gap in the force field.

"Watch out!" Allan blasted a trident beam at a surge of fire aimed at Nate: The Firetroop had not yet been beaten and it now realised, for some reason, that it needed to remove the entity that was preventing the heat of the Dark Stone from spreading.

"Keep at it, Nate." Allan encouraged. "We'll deal with this guy."

Around them the Hazard Inc. base was ablaze. Allan, Edward, Vicky, Zoe and Charlotte sized up the fire-powered Biotroop. The next moment Charlotte dove at Allan just as a rush of flames decimated the area where he had stood. The creature aimed another blast but Charlotte shattered a capsule at her feet, cloaking herself and Allan in white smoke.

Zoe sent a blast of lightning at the foe, but due to the massive heat of the air surrounding the Firetroop the current was greatly diminished. Vicky shifted into her healing form and used her wings to climb into the air. She distracted the creature who wasted a few of its shots trying to hit her – Vicky's aerial agility had greatly improved since her meeting with the source of her powers – and the distraction gave her teammates a few valuable moments to compose themselves.

Bessie felt lightheaded. The burning dark stone was drawing all the breathable air inside the force field toward itself. The idea dawned on her that they could just wait it out until the oxygen was depleted, but the real question was whether the force field would last long enough. Whatever Bessie was going to do, she had precious little time in which to do it. The smoke, heat haze and orange light from the fire made the area feel almost otherworldly. She strained her eyes to see the burning stone and lifted it. She instinctively tried to blow it out, even though she knew it wouldn't work. An idea dawned on her: if it was just a matter of what gave out first, maybe she could force it to burn more quickly. Taking the stone into both arms, she hugged it against her torso and willed herself to the highest temperature she could manage. It began to glow orange, then yellow, then white and the next moment it began to melt. But as it did, instead of dripping to the floor and scorching it, it permeated Bessie's skin and absorbed into her bloodstream. Understandably Bessie panicked for a moment but then she realised all the remaining heat was coming from her. She cooled herself down again and so did the temperature inside the force field.

The Firetroop felt a chill down its side as Edward sprayed it with liquid nitrogen. It turned to face him and blasted him aside with an explosion. Edward twisted on the floor where he fell, trying to get up again. Eventually the smoke surrounding Allan and Charlotte dissipated. The creature's glowing eyes locked onto Allan's, which widened: as he reached for his strap he realised that his trident had gone missing in the smoke and confusion. The creature realised this was his chance. It charged up an unfathomably hot blast and focused it into its hands which were outstretched toward Allan. The creature grew so hot that even the ground around its feet melted. One blast was all it would take to rid the world of its biggest threat. Allan's alarmed façade dropped and he cracked a smile.

"The problem with going for an opponent when you think they've been weakened is that it becomes your priority." He said slowly. "But you've already lost. You've been so focused on me in my compromised state that you failed to notice the blue glow hovering right above your head."

The next moment the orange light from the fire was drowned out by an even brighter cyan light as a roar like a giant wave and violent steam deafened everyone present. When the noise finally died down and only the sound of the flames from the burning enemy base was left, Nate finally ran out of power and the force field dissipated as the lifeless robot fell to the ground. To everyone's relief the burning Dark Stone was gone and only Bessie stood where it once was burning.

"What happened?" Edward asked as he hoisted Nate's depleted bodywork onto his back.

"I accidentally melted the stone." Bessie explained. "I think it drew into my skin."

Flo gave Bessie a quick once-over and confirmed her theory. "The fragment of the dark stone that was the creature's weapon exists within your blood now." She explained.

"What does that mean?" Zoe asked.

"I think we should leave the questions for later." Vicky interjected. "We _are_ still inside a burning building. We should get out of here."

"You're not going anywhere!" Leather Jack had returned and he was now livid. "Look at what you've done to the place! **Mayhem!** "The hulking brute appeared and readied himself to administer a beating. "Pummel them. Snap their necks. Break them into bits. **Slaughter them!** "

The heroes were horribly fatigued but readied themselves for a battle nonetheless. Just then Bessie stepped out ahead of them.

"I'll handle this," she said calmly. She stuck out a hand at the advancing Mayhem and discharged a massive flare, bowling him over and pounding him and his master into the wall behind them. Now that the Dark Stone had been absorbed into her being she could launch actual flames rather than merely increase her body temperature to immensely high levels.

Back home, Nate had been recharged and was back to life, and Bessie was getting ready to head back to her own dwelling. Her mother had left fifteen voice messages and sent countless texts, so she had more than a little explaining to do.

"So I'll see you at school tomorrow, OK?" she said to Charlotte.

"Wait," Charlotte said just as Bessie was leaving. "There's something I'd rather you hear it from me. This morning when I talked to you… I only did it because Mullins asked me to."

"Oh… I…" Bessie looked for a good way to deal with Charlotte's honesty. "I'm glad she did." She eventually said with a smile.

"Yeah. Me too," came Charlotte's reply.

"So, I've had my really good bad luck. Do I get to be on the team?" Bessie asked.

"You already are." Charlotte answered. "See ya, Bessie."

"You can call me Explosibeth."

THE END

"Look at what those morons did to my beautiful control room! Hazard Inc. will not stand for this!" Jack ranted. "Next time I see that twerp I'll put out her fire for good! How soon can you get the Biotroop producer back up and running so they can fix this place up?"

"I'll need to replace most of the fuses and the circuit boards have been melted," Tech answered.

"What's that in time?" Jack urged.

"Five days."

"Make it three."

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the villains, stuck in a portion of the floor that had cooled again after being melted, the gaseous bulk of the creature from the Dark Stone wondered when next it would encounter living tissue.


End file.
